This house is ours - chapter "-2" (Patreon)

-2.

Can I tell you a secret? I think I'm happy. I know what to do now. I'm not conflicted. I'm not worried. I feel… fine. I've even started listening again, when you sit outside my door and play me the recordings of your father's voice. The jokes and conversations from his hospital bed. I am wearing my earplugs less. I don't need half-measures of oblivion when the real thing is so close.

I remember when I was in elementary school, they told us about suicide. About the warning signs. If one of your sad friends suddenly seems cheerful, that's a warning sign. Happiness is a warning sign. If your friend started giving away a lot of their stuff as presents. That was a warning sign. I have no idea why they were telling elementary school kids this. Once they had a very old woman come and talk to us. She had lived through the Halifax Explosion.

She told us about seeing a man walking down Spring Garden Road holding his own arm in his hand. She told us her brother's eye just popped out, and dangled. We were all sitting on the floor of the library listening to her. Elementary school! What a weird world.

I loved that library though. Every six months or so they would have the Scholastic Book Fair, and a week beforehand we would get a little catalog of what they were going to sell, and how much it would cost. And my mother would give me the money for one book. I loved it. I loved sitting on the couch reading and rereading that catalog. Examining the tiny covers. What book would I get?

I'm happy. I'm even a bit silly sometimes. Like nothing matters. But it does, too. I'm enjoying my memories. They're so weird and stupid. The Halifax Explosion was the largest man made explosion before Hiroshima. That's no joke. Pop your damn eyeball out, man.

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